‘People at top of society are to blame for crisis, not immigrants’

Shoppers walk in a market in Upton Park, a neighborhood in the British capital's most culturally diverse borough of Newham, in east London (Reuters/Paul Hacket) / Reuters

People need to turn their anger against those really responsible for the economic crisis and its consequences, i.e. politicians and businessmen, not against immigrants who only benefit Britain, the Socialist Workers Party’s Charlie Kimber told RT.

The contradictory Home Office anti-immigration ‘go home’
campaign has been running for several months and is strongly
criticized by many people. Indignation has skyrocketed since the
appearance of ‘immigration vans’ in the streets and then
after an estimated 58,000 text messages were sent to people
accusing them of being in the UK illegally and warning them to
leave the country. The migration issue has once again
emphasized the difference between political approaches of
incumbent Conservatives and UK Labour supporters and Socialists,
who are favorable to migrants and call to stop this racist
campaign.

For more on the campaign watch RT’s Laura Smith report

As Charlie Kimber told RT, the anti-immigration campaign is a
terrible policy since “it is designed to make us choose the
wrong targets for our anger” and accuse instead of welcome
those [immigrants], who make great contribution to the
development of the British socio-economic system.

‘Children of Men’is a 2006 science fiction film directed
by Alfonso Cuaron, which presents a world coming to an
end. In 2027, after two decades of global human
infertility, civilization is on the brink of
collapse as humanity faces the grim reality of extinction.
The UK, one of the few stable states with a functioning
government, has been inundated by immigrants from around the
world, fleeing from the chaos and war. In response, Britain
becomes a militarized police state as British
forces round up and detain immigrants.

RT:The movie ‘Children of Men’ is set in a grim
future, but some parts of it seem to be very familiar. Do you
think this anti-immigrant campaign is a worrying indication of
where the UK is heading now?

Charlie Kimber: I think it’s a very dangerous and toxic
policy which does indeed threaten to create these sorts of
conditions, which that film we have just seen indicated.
Somewhere it’s a throwback to the racist and fascist policies of
the 1930s. I think we are
seeing a two-pronged attack: one is to strike fear, to intimidate
immigrants, to tell them they are not welcome here, to try and
stop them coming here and to reduce the rights of people who have
come to Britain to work and to study. The other and, indeed,
what’s more important from the government terms, is to offer up
immigrants as scapegoats to the rest of the population to say
that there are real problems in society: bad housing, lack of
jobs, no future for young people, and instead of blaming those
who are really responsible – the politicians, the big businessmen
and the bankers – instead we are encouraged to blame our
neighbor, workmate, someone at school with us and to say that the
immigrant is the problem, not the rich. It’s a terrible policy, it’s a racist
policy, and it’s a class policy which is designed to make us
choose the wrong targets for our anger.

RT:So you think that this campaign has been accurate
in choosing the right people to warn, right?

CK: Well, I think any immigrants are not the right
targets. I think it’s extraordinary the casual way in which those
people have been chosen by the Home Office and it’s certainly a
very interesting question of how they have obtained their phone
numbers. But I’m against all the attacks on
immigrants. I think this
notion of illegals, the notion of people who don’t have rights in
Britain, we should remember that immigrants contribute far more
to the economy than they ever take out. Far from being a drain on
the welfare state, these are the people who build the whole
service, who build the education service, who build the social
care service in Britain, without them those services would
collapse and instead of attacking immigrants we should be uniting
with them.

RT:But immigration has to be controlled, what do you
think?

CK: Before the First World War in Britain there were no
immigration controls - that’s an extraordinary fact that most
people wouldn’t know. I think immigrants are the tremendous
benefit for Britain. They have brought huge educational,
economic, cultural benefits to Britain, we have gained far more
from immigration than we have ever lost and we should be less
defensive about it and say that immigrants are welcome here, they
have improved Britain instead of turning against them, we should
be welcoming our sisters and brothers and turn our real anger
against the people at the top of society who brought us to
this economic crisis.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.